Jeremiah 19

As city dwellers we learn to tune out background noise that we do not want to hear. Some think that this increases chances of mental illness or even cancer, all those sound waves and light waves flowing through the air.

Lord help us not to tune you out. Be our guide and our helper.

In Jeremiah 19 here is the first time, that I recall, that Jeremiah is shown interacting with a group, prophesying directly out loud. He must have done it before. But the book records his messages, not how he delivered them. Could he have delivered them in writing?

Here he is told by God to take some of the elders and some of the leading priests to the valley of Ben-himmon. I guess this must be a part of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is filled with hills and valleys. It is not flat. God also told him to buy a pot and bring it along.

There Jeremiah gives them the message he has been telling them all along. He notes their disobedience in worshiping other gods and being dishonest in their dealings. (That is how I interpret "filled this place with the blood of the innocent".) He mentions very openly that they have been sacrificing their children to idols. This is just one of their many sins but to us this is so awful we hate to even think about it. Perhaps that is what Jeremiah means by "filled this place with the blood of innocents". But as they cheat the poor, mentioned elsewhere, they also perhaps mortally harm innocent people.

Then Jeremiah pronounces their doom. He predicts they will again sacrifice their children when they get hungry enough during a siege. That too is awful, impossible to really imagine.

They he smashes the pot before them. I can imagine him throwing it down and watching it shatter. He says, "As the pot that cannot be mended is broken in pieces so shall you be broken declares the LORD." So God declares that they are beyond help, beyond repair.

Then Jeremiah moves from the valley to the temple and then pronounces disaster on the city and surrounding towns and the people in them. God will do this because they refuse to hear and have stiffened their necks. They have tuned God out.

There is a play on words here: "disaster" that describes what God will do is the same word used to describe the "evil" which the people are doing.

I trust that you have sent us your Holy Spirit to be our guide and to keep us tuned in to your voice. Amen.